Jaco De Jongh Posted October 23, 2016 Share Posted October 23, 2016 Hi Found my 3 month old BMV 702 like this earlier tonight. Looking at the monitoring software, the unit still seem to work fine. Question 1: Anybody with an Idea what could be the reason and or cause of this? Question 2: Does anyone know of a configuration tool that is available that I can use to program this unit in the future. With the display not working I can not make any changes? Dont want to buy a new one just because the display is shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
___ Posted October 23, 2016 Share Posted October 23, 2016 As I recall it has a 5-year warranty. Might have to ask Camel about it? Q1: Likely a contact problem on a ribbon cable inside the unit. Just a guess, the usual thing that happens with LCDs. Q2: A number of ways to connect to it. Either via USB-vedirect cable, or if you use a cell phone you can use either a usb cable (and an OTG adapter on Android) or the Bluetooth cable. The Bluetooth cable would likely be a deal breaker due to price, though it is real handy for installers. Anyway, then you use VictronConnect on a PC or smart phone. https://www.victronenergy.com/live/victronconnect:start Finally, you could write your own software too. The protocol document is on their website and it documents all the registers and how to read/write them. Jaco De Jongh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaco De Jongh Posted October 23, 2016 Author Share Posted October 23, 2016 Thanks@plonkster, just downloaded Victronconnect about 15min ago, will test tomorrow. Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
___ Posted October 23, 2016 Share Posted October 23, 2016 It's been a hectic weekend. School concert on Friday night. Had to do a lot of repairs at our rental place, and also did some support on the Raspberry Pi version of Venus. Discovered and fixed horrible bug too. Details on the bug: Turns out the Raspberry Pi's stage1 loader (start.elf) reads the serial number and ethernet address from the board and passes that to the kernel as a boot parameter. If you use your own bootloader (we use u-boot) and you forget to pass it on, then it comes up with a zero serial number and a random ethernet address. Venus uses the ethernet address as the VRM ID on the VRM site. So as you might imagine, a device that comes up with a new random VRM ID on every boot is a massive problem! I'm off to bed now though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaco De Jongh Posted October 25, 2016 Author Share Posted October 25, 2016 @The Terrible Triplett, Guess what, I am following in your footsteps!! I think I discovered what happened to my 702........... Did you ever see the part in the manual where it states that the potential free contact is rated for 60Volt 1A max? Well I missed that part, and chose to switch my supply contactor with 230VAC. Must compliment Victron, it lasted a couple of months like that. Will leave this post and hope someone planning to do the same, reads this first. (This is a good example of how not to to do it) @plonkster, Any idea why it would have isolated the fault to the display only? Something in the way they build these units must have prevented the fault current to reach the other parts. It seems like the rest is still working fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viper_za Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 8 minutes ago, Jaco de Jongh said: @The Terrible Triplett, Guess what, I am following in your footsteps!! I think I discovered what happened to my 702........... Did you ever see the part in the manual where it states that the potential free contact is rated for 60Volt 1A max? Jaco we had a big discussion about this in a topic earlier this year. How high did you go? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
___ Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 I doubt it had anything to do with the display going bad.Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 50 minutes ago, Jaco de Jongh said: Well I missed that part, and chose to switch my supply contractor with 230VAC. Must compliment Victron, it lasted a couple of months like that. I checked with their support, after the guys here put the fear of smoke in me, my relays where perfectly acceptable. Working now for 6, going 7 years. Plus, the company who built it for me, the guy who actually did the work, was a electrical engineer fully aware of the spec of the Victron BMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
___ Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 If that bit goes, it will usually go in one of three ways. It will either carbon up so properly that it no longer switches reliably... or it will weld itself together and be permanently switched on, or it will get hot or arc in a fire-causing manner that will melt the whole thing and possibly take the house with it. If you go high enough and the voltage manages to jump a gap onto another component... then MAYBE it could damage an LCD, but I seriously doubt that's what happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaco De Jongh Posted October 25, 2016 Author Share Posted October 25, 2016 @viper_za, thanks did search for it a bit, but cant seem to find it, you dont happen to remember the name of the Thread it was discussed in? I will search some more. To answer your question, In my area the Grid is going up to 254VAC, so i guess that is the max it was exposed to. @The Terrible Triplett, can you remember the coil voltage of your relays? @plonkster, I am glad you feel that it might not have been my doing, I am my own worst enemy most of the time, and if something fails, I normal start looking at myself to see if I did something wrong. I saw this in the Manuel today and "sommer net daar" decided that I might have been the reason for the failure. Now you tell me this, and I was expecting this perfect explanation on how everything went downhill after I connected the AC to that contact. (Was actually looking forward to that, at least I would have had a reason for the failure) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 @Jaco de Jongh here is the thread, picture of the relays are there: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camel Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 The replacement unit has been ordered, soon you will have a better display Jaco De Jongh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaco De Jongh Posted October 25, 2016 Author Share Posted October 25, 2016 Thank you Camel, really appreciate your help in resolving this issue. Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaco De Jongh Posted November 25, 2016 Author Share Posted November 25, 2016 On 2016/10/25 at 7:07 PM, Camel said: The replacement unit has been ordered, soon you will have a better display Hi Guys, forgot to close this one out, Although the actual reason for this failure was never determined, the story had a great ending.. +1 to @Camel, for replacing the unit, no questions asked. You have earned my respect and loyalty. superdiy, Chris Hobson and HeinTheTerrible 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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